The present invention relates to a method for producing material-charged substrates in which                a) at least one substrate is introduced into an evacuated vacuum container;        b) the surface of the substrate to be charged is exposed to a reactive gas which is adsorbed on the surface;        c) the exposure of the surface to the reactive gas is terminated,        d) the reactive gas adsorbed on the surface is allowed to react.        
Such a method is prior known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,916,365. Therein a substrate is introduced into an evacuated vacuum container with a container wall comprised of ceramics, delimiting the process volume against the environment.
The surface to be coated of the substrate is exposed to a first reactive gas, which is adsorbed on said surface. The exposure of the surface to the reactive gas is terminated by subsequently pumping off the reactive gas.
A second reactive gas is subsequently introduced and, by means of a coil configuration provided outside of the vacuum container, an electromagnetic high-frequency field is generated in the container. Thereby at least a portion of the introduced second reactive gas is activated to form radicals, and the first reactive gas adsorbed on the surface, is allowed to react exclusively with said radicals generated by the effect of the high-frequency field.
The present invention addresses the problem of proposing a method of the above listed type, which builds on the deposition of a monolayer of atoms on the surface of the substrate to be coated, but has a substantially expanded flexibility of application with respect to the variety of monolayers which can be deposited.
We are herein addressing charging with materials for the reason that said monolayer does not need to be deposited as a continuous layer in the sense of a coating, but rather the density of deposited atoms can be far lower than is necessary for the formation of a continuous layer. But, if desired, the material charging can readily take place such that a continuous monolayer is formed, in this case in the sense of a coating.